Red-Dot Ruger Blackhawk
Uncounted projects, from cars to firearms to man caves and just about anything else, have been begun with the desire to do “something different.” While it’s impossible to know the exact numbers, among handguns, conservative estimates can probably peg the sales discrepancy between semiautomatics and the traditional revolver at about ten to one.
So in that regard, this custom firearm build truly is something different—in fact, it’s the first customized revolver to be featured in UN12.
The desire to do something unlike what’s been done before was indeed a major factor in this gun’s build. “In all seriousness, this was a build that caught my attention because it is so drastically different,” says Tyler Roberts, co-founder of Licentia Arms in Frankfurt, Kentucky, and current owner of this custom red-dot-equipped Ruger six-shooter.
Licentia Arms is a dealer of night vision devices whose founders have dedicated themselves to customer education in the world of NVGs. They feel that in this highly technical realm, where even basic gear can cost a goodly sum, it’s important to make informed buying decisions without acquiring anything you don’t particularly want or need. The word “licentia” is adapted from a Latin term meaning freedom, liberty, and the leave to do as one pleases.
The gun began life as a Ruger New Model Blackhawk. The venerable Blackhawk is a six-shot, single-action revolver developed partly as an homage to the classic six-shooters that helped tame the American West. It was first introduced in 1955, and part of Sturm, Ruger & Co.’s marketing strategy may well have been capitalizing on the popularity of the now-classic western films of the day like John Ford’s “The Searchers” (starring John Wayne) and George Stevens’ “Shane.”
The Blackhawk is still celebrated for its simple, robust design. It was originally chambered in .357 Magnum, but was soon adapted to .44 Magnum as a foil to Smith & Wesson’s .44 of the day. In its 60-odd years, it has become legendary for its efficacy and accuracy, and big game hunters have used it to stalk and bag some of the toughest and most dangerous targets of ill repute, including grizzly bear, lion, and cape buffalo.
Six decades and change later, the Blackhawk is still available new from the manufacturer with minimal evolution. This one was originally purchased and customized by Alex Huffman at Pegasus Rifleworks. For the build’s concept, Huffman’s inspiration came from the video game realm.
“This revolver takes heavy inspiration from a variety of guns from the ‘Borderlands’ series,” he says. “It was just a ‘why the hell not?’ sort of thing. I build a lot of high-end AKs. After a while building the same thing over and over again gets kind of boring, so you have to figure out how to spice things up somehow.”
Huffman and Roberts first met at a customer-appreciation range day to which their respective companies were party. “I brought [the Blackhawk] in to fire a couple rounds downrange when things were slow,” Huffman says.
“Our tables were right next to each other, so we started talking about custom guns, stuff like that,” Roberts says. “Alex was telling me about his different projects and how he approaches different builds. He’s a pretty modest guy, but he’s one of the most talented gunsmiths I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. He uses different parts and puts different things on guns regardless of how they quote unquote ‘should be’—like the red dot on this revolver, for instance. That’s part of why this build got me so excited.”
On the trio’s first meeting—the two men and the gun—Roberts continues: “We were looking at it through two different sets of eyes. He looked at it from the standpoint of the build and the thought process behind it, but I looked at it without any kind of bias of what it was supposed to be. I’m not a video game guy and I didn’t pick up on that connection right away. I noticed first that it had an RMR on it… so owning a night vision company and doing a lot of night shooting, the first thing I thought of was ‘If it’s got a red dot, I can shoot it under NODs.’”
The attraction was so strong between the gun and its future owner that Roberts tried to seal the deal right then and there. “I tried to buy it on the spot, but he responded that no, it wasn’t for sale,” Roberts says. “After I’d tried about four more times, one day he texted me and asked me if I still wanted it. Because it was time for him to start a new project.”
The first thing Huffman did to this gun was cut down the barrel by about an inch, so it’s currently around 5 inches even. He re-crowned it, and to accommodate the Trijicon RMR he made a mount that press-fit over the gun’s frame so the optic is not set directly on the wood.
Obviously, the original RMR04 still resides on the gun and Roberts does use it for night vision shooting. But, since the RMR04 uses fiber optics that rely on ambient light, it does not interface as well with his NVGs. Roberts’ plan is to swap the optic for a battery-powered RMR06 in the near future.
To impart the gritty sort of look and feel he was after, Huffman crafted the wood furniture out of scrap he procured from a cast-off table he found on the side of the road. The pieces for the improvised “handguard” were cut out of one of the table’s legs. For those wood accents, he says, “I cut it up into a couple pieces on the band saw, then started milling it to the sizes I needed. I made a slot so you can still access the ejector, which is kind of important on a single-action.” The wooden panels are pinned to a barrel shroud that was milled out of a solid block of aluminum that was then hammered onto the barrel and pinned in place.
The grip panels are made from the same found wood. Because he has larger-than-average hands, Huffman also built a frame extension and spent time shaping the grip to his liking. “The panels are held in place by the two screws and a bushing,” Huffman says. “Those were done by hand using a belt sander.” He shaped it all as one piece so that you’d be hard-pressed to guess it didn’t come that way directly from Ruger.
As both he and Roberts attest, it’s comfortable to shoot and fairly docile when equipped with the 9mm cylinder. “The ergonomics of the frame extension and grip, it makes [handling it] very intuitive,” Roberts says. “Everything is right where you expect it to be.” The added weight from the barrel shroud, the wood, and the RMR also helps keep it stable even when shooting .357 Magnum rounds.
While in its 60-plus years of existence the Blackhawk has been outfitted to accommodate a multitude of calibers, we’ve mentioned three—.44, .357, 9mm—and this revolver can be equipped to shoot the latter two.
“I didn’t touch the cylinders, but I did extend the hammer,” Huffman says. This, too, was done to reproduce the look of certain in-game Borderlands guns that he wanted this Blackhawk to emulate. To get it done, Huffman adapted an AK-platform fire control group for the trigger shoe and to produce the extended hammer.
“One of our previous [rifles] was built off an unconverted Saiga, one we’d convert into a more standard configuration, so we had a ton of the old factory triggers lying around,” Huffman says. “It was easy enough to cut off a chunk of that and weld it in place.”
Initially he also tried to weld the frame extension, but soon found that aluminum was an entirely different animal than steel, so he scrapped those plans and pinned it. The gun’s metal is finished in a custom Cerakote mix that Huffman mixed and applied himself, which is also mixture of materials he had lying around the shop. Two shades were used, Sniper Grey being one and another whose origin is not 100% certain.
The gun hasn’t gotten any less popular from an onlooker’s standpoint since arriving in Tyler Roberts’ collection. “There have been multiple people who have tried to buy it off of me,” he says. But, as with its erstwhile owner, he’s loath to part with it. Its appeal, he says, is still precisely because it is so different from the firearms he shoots on the regular.
“Keep in mind this is a single-action revolver,” Roberts says. “Doing what I do for a living, I have the luxury of shooting anything and everything all the time, from belt-feds and sub-guns to all different types of M16s. Very few guns really get me excited anymore. After shooting this revolver, I’d prefer to shoot it over any belt-fed or anything like that.”
For Roberts, its original and enduring appeal is its analog, obviously mechanical nature. “Loading the cylinder, getting to pull the trigger on it,” he says. “It’s the simplicity of it, the manual operation—cocking the hammer, pulling the trigger, cocking the hammer again. It’s sort of a humbling experience, to be so enthralled with something so simple.”
He quickly adds: “And the accuracy with the RMR… I wasn’t familiar with it at all at first and was still just stacking shots.”
The other great thing about it, he feels, is its universal appeal. “One thing that should be noted about this specific revolver,” Roberts says. “You can take someone who is brand-new to guns or someone like us with a lot of experience in the industry, and it still stands out from every other thing that people know to be ‘normal.’ It enthuses everyone from the top of the industry all the way down.” Images by Licentia Arms
Build Sheet: Custom Ruger New Model Blackhawk
Specifications
Caliber: 9mm, .357 Magnum
Capacity: 6
Barrel: OEM Ruger cut to 5 in.
Overall Length: 10.75 in.
Weight Unloaded: 3 lbs (approx.)
Coating: Custom gray mix Cerakote by Alex Huffman
Frame: OEM Ruger w/custom frame extension
Featured Accessories:
Optic: Trijicon RMR04 on
Custom mount
Parts & Accessories:
Modified Saiga AK fire control group (trigger/hammer), custom aluminum barrel shroud, custom-cut found wood barrel panels, custom-shaped found wood grip panels
About the Owner
Name: Tyler Roberts
Occupation: Co-owner,
Licentia Arms
Social: Instagram @licentia_arms
